Alex Waddan – författare

Not five minutes after the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was signed into law, in March 2010, Virginia’s attorney general was suing to stop it. And yet, the ACA rolled out, in infamously bumpy fashion, and rolled on, fought and defended at every turn—despite President Obama’s claim, in 2014, that its proponents and opponents could finally “stop fighting old political battles that keep us gridlocked.” But not only would the battles not stop, as Obamacare Wars makes acutely clear, they spread from Washington, DC, to a variety of new arenas. The first thorough account of the implementation of the ACA, this book reveals the fissures the act exposed in the American federal system.Obamacare Wars shows how the law’s intergovernmental structure, which entails the participation of both the federal government and the states, has deeply shaped the politics of implementation. Focusing on the creation of insurance exchanges, the expansion of Medicaid, and execution of regulatory reforms, Daniel BÉland, Philip Rocco, and Alex Waddan examine how opponents of the ACA fought back against its implementation. They also explain why opponents of the law were successful in some efforts and not in others—and not necessarily in a seemingly predictable red vs. blue pattern. Their work identifies the role of policy legacies, institutional fragmentation, and public sentiments in each instance as states grappled with new institutions, as in the case of the exchanges, or existing structures, in Medicaid and regulatory reform.Looking broadly at national trends and specifically at the experience of individual states, Obamacare Wars brings much-needed clarity to highly controversial but little-understood aspects of the Affordable Care Act’s odyssey, with implications for how we understand the future trajectory of health reform, as well as the multiple forms of federalism in American politics.

After four years of a presidency unbound, President Biden consciously moved to a calmer style of leadership. Yet, the political environment remained ferociously partisan and former President Trump continued to wield influence on the Republican Party. Against this backdrop, Trump vs Biden examines the durability of the Trump regime, focusing on the extent to which the political footprint of the forty-fifth president remains after his dramatic departure from office.Clodagh Harrington and Alex Waddan analyse meaningful priority shifts, policy changes and the imprint of presidential leadership, providing a framework for assessing Trump’s legacy. In turn, this provides context to the Biden administration’s efforts to reverse course and steer the US back to a more established form of politics and policy.Looking beyond the noise and hyperbole, the book also reflects on areas where Biden in fact reinforced elements of Trumpism. In an epilogue, the authors discuss the 2024 election and the opening six months of Trump’s 2nd term.

Examines how Trump's election as President signals a rollback of the Obama yearsIn 2008, in what seemed a seminal moment for the country's politics, the United States elected an African American as President. Yet, eight years later, in the form of Donald Trump, the nation put in office a man who was the very antithesis of his predecessor. This book determines what can legitimately be regarded as the legacy of the Obama presidency and investigates how far the Trump administration has reversed it. The analysis is embedded in a historical context, based on examination and scrutiny of how, and how successfully, presidents in the modern era have overturned the work of their predecessor when they have attempted to do so. The authors focus on meaningful priority shifts, policy changes and the imprint of presidential leadership, providing a framework for assessing Obama's legacy, which in turn affords context to a discussion of the Trump administration's capacity to fulfil its promise to reverse the direction taken by the Obama White House. Looking beyond the noise and hyperbole, the book examines how robust the Obama legacy has proved to be in the face of Trump's challenge.

This timely and significant book provides a comprehensive overview of right-wing ideology and policy-making in the years since Ronald Reagan left office, and an explanation of the reasons why the Republicans, the 'party of Reagan', turned towards Donald Trump.The authors assess the ways in which the Reagan legacy, rather than the empirical realities of his tenure, has impacted economic, social and cultural policy formation and conservative efforts at reshaping the United States. They also evaluate the changing relationships between different ideological currents on the right. Against this background, The American Right after Reagan discusses Trump's insurgent populism and the profound tensions that have marked his presidency.This thought-provoking book will prove invaluable to scholars in political science and American Studies, in particular those studying US domestic or foreign policy during this period. It will also provide useful insights for those seeking to understand the recent rise of right-wing populism and Trump's ascendancy.